Smith: Being a factory rider harder than I expected

After four years with the customer Tech 3 Yamaha team, Smith moved to spearhead KTM's full factory debut in the premier class for this season.

The Briton struggled for much of the year relative to teammate Pol Espargaro, with his position in the team coming under threat despite his two-year contract with the Austrian marque.

Smith was eventually retained for 2018, and he duly tallied up his first top 10 results of the campaign to end the year 21st overall on 29 points – some 26 down on Espargaro.

The KTM rider conceded that the extra 'strain' of riding for a developing manufacturer compared with a satellite team took its toll on him, but he enjoyed the experience nevertheless.

“For the first time I think ever I'm actually looking forward to a holiday post-season, you feel you've needed it,” Smith said.

“Whether it's the extra tests that we do, the extra strain from being a development team, or at least in a development process as a manufacturer.

“Certainly, it's been a lot more demanding mentally, physically than I imagined.

“Fun-wise, I would say probably yeah, it certainly has been great fun. I've learnt an awful lot, I've enjoyed the process phenomenally.

“It's certainly been an eye-opener in many ways, but you start to understand when you are on a satellite bike you have things, in many ways, a lot easier than you realise.

“You'll never have the best, but you have an amazing package with none of the stuff that comes with it.”

Smith confessed that the biggest change he had to make as a rider in 2017 was to realise each weekend was effectively a test session, something he found hard to do for a while.

“[The biggest change was] about the difference between testing and racing and finding that balance - mentally to distinguish between are we developing the bike every time we ride or are we trying to race the bike," he said.

“I think that was something I wasn't doing a very good job of. I was thinking more big picture rather than short term, but at the end of the day both were being affected.

“Sometimes it's actually better the rider concentrates short-term and the team focus more on long-term. That's their job as such, or at least the test rider's job as well.

“So distinguishing between those two for me is the biggest difference, and one of the hardest things for me to have done this year."

Additional reporting by Gerald Dirnbeck